Per-Product Config file divergence

[Stephen Gallagher]

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On 03/10/2014 03:16 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 12:10 PM, Toshio Kuratomi
> <a.badger at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The idea is to allow config file divergence via the alternatives
>> system as
> 
> Will this handle user customization? IME alternatives is not geared
> to handle config files, customizable shell scripts, etc.
> 

Two points:
 1) We haven't decided if we intend to support globally changing the
defaults after package installation. This would lead to a lot of risky
edge-cases, so we may want to just punt on it.


 2) If we allow switching between products, we probably have to treat
the entire Product configuration of a package as a single unit.
Meaning that if you invoked alternatives, it would switch ALL of the
known config files to the new version, but switching it *back* should
restore user modifications to the current state.

To try to describe this in a less generalized manner, I'd see it being
something like this:

/etc/somefile.conf is a [soft|hard]link that points to one of:

/etc/packagename.conf/default/somefile.conf
/etc/packagename.conf/cloud/somefile.conf
/etc/packagename.conf/server/somefile.conf
/etc/packagename.conf/workstation/somefile.conf

Edits to somefile.conf would change whatever's on the other end of the
link. The alternatives system would change this linkage, to another
version, but switching it back will give you your edits, not just the
original defaults.


This is just one possible approach I'm throwing out there. As I noted,
it's a hard problem to solve completely, so a valid answer would be to
punt completely and assume that the default only matters at package
installation time (and that if you wanted to change things, you can
manually make edits or copy some or all of the other Product(s)' configs.
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